Re: reply to Steven
dweldon@OITVMS.OIT.UMASS.EDU
Tue, 26 Nov 1996 03:59:43 -0500
Hi Steven:
I see that you and Nicholas have received some very good responses to
your questions. I hope you don't mind, but I feel compelled to add a
little more to question 5: Who were the victims in the war and why?
We often have a tendency to think of the victims as those that may have
lost loved ones during the war. In reality a "victim" can be anyone
whose life was affected by the war. In any war there will be "victims" for
years and years to come. Once war alters a life, the consequences can go
on forever.
I was not alive when WWII took place yet I still feel my family are
"victims" of its aftermath. My father entered the war as one person and
emerged as quite a different one. He was once a young man that loved
life to its fullest. A gentle caring soul that wanted nothing to do with
war and its ugly destruction. Yet when called, he served his country
with honor and dignity.
My father returned home after WWII to marry my mother and begin to pick up
the pieces to start their new lives together. It worked for a while but
soon my dad was haunted by the killing and the other horrors of war. This
turned him to something that he never had reason to touch before in his
life: alcohol. Over time he eventually destroyed his own life as well as
many relationships with family and friends.
That is why I feel my family (and many others with similar
circumstances) are "victims" of war. It took from me the "real" father
that I never got a chance to know and whose grandchildren will never
know except in one way: He lives on in each of us and I like to think
that we carry in us the good person that he once was.
Take care and may peace be ever with you.
Darrell Weldon
dweldon@oitvms.oit.umass.edu